Government continues its fight over southafrica.com domain
September 16, 2004
 By Lynda Loxton
Cape Town - Despite expensive litigation in the US, the government had not yet won the battle to own the southafrica.com domain name, but hoped to take over the .za domain name by the end of the year, deputy communications minister Roy Padayachee said yesterday.
"Most countries want to own their country's domain name ... it is quite a powerful international marketing tool," he said.
The southafrica.com domain name was still registered to Virtual Countries, a US company, which in 2002 had tried to get the government to pay up to $10 million to get ownership.
This had been "regarded as too high as the registration cost approximately $35", Padayachee said.
The government had lobbied World Intellectual Property Organisation to arbitrate, but this had been halted when Virtual Countries issued a summons against South Africa seeking a court order to prohibit it from using the name southafrica.com, Padayachee said.
This was opposed by the government on the basis that the company could not take a sovereign state to court. This view was upheld by the district court, but Virtual Countries appealed.
The appeal was dismissed, but the name remained the property of Virtual Countries.
One positive outcome of this litigation was that, although South Africa could not get back the domain name, it was successful "in ensuring that Virtual Countries can now no longer transfer this domain name to any other company or to any other individual", Padayachee said.
The International Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers "has now decided that no individuals or companies will have access to the ownership of domain names centred around country names".
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